Wraith
by Benny Bechard
Summary: Wylie is one of the few Hyperion Headhunters. His job is to 'police' the galaxy of those who sell arms illegally, a job job which has brought him to Pandora 2 years after the Vault has been open . Rated M for language, violence, sexual themes.


Hyperion Headhunter Chronicles

Planet Pandora

Mission No. 21: Eliminate S&S Arms dealer

Wylie repelled down the hole, his gloved hands gripping the rope as his Battle Rifle hung by it's sling from his back. The sounds of Skags rooting about below was something he had become use to since arriving on Pandora.

Just over a year ago the Hyperion company had renewed his contract as one of their own Headhunter's – an agent sent to keep their competitors from selling arms 'illegally'. It was true for the most part, but only on planets with actual governments to speak of, here on Pandora those rules and regulations that kept companies in check had a habit of being thrown into a pile or Rakk crap and left to dry in the sun.

It was truly the wild west on Pandora, a world where anything, and everything is either valuable, expendable, or just plain useless. The annoying CL4T – TP bots that were around every corner were a perfect example of the uselessness of some of Pandora's so called "good points" that the vacation brochures always highlighted in big red letters.

What a waste of dirt.

Showers were non-existent, good food meant cooking what you killed, and the only good conversations he had were the ones with himself. Of all the things this planet lacked, there was only one simple thing that made it worth anything to anyone – stupid vault myths aside.

The guns.

Within minutes of stepping off his shuttle Wylie had seen guns of almost every make and model there was on the market. Old and new, Jakobs and S&S, Lightning and Corrosive, even rocket launchers were in an overstocked supply. It was clear to him why Hyperion had wanted a larger piece of this road-kill laden pie.

So he had been sent to cut it.

His grip on the rope loosened as he neared the bottom, letting him land smoothly – in the middle of a Skag pile. Green slime covered his boots and old cans mixed with looked like broken bones from another, smaller, skag. His hands automatically brought his rifle up to his shoulder and he looked down his custom 2.5X magnification sight.

As a headhunter he was privileged with anything he wanted from the Hyperion corporation's armouries. His Battle Rifle was his pride, and older model built for the perfect headshot and near flawless accuracy. Added on it were a scope, custom tailored stock for his shoulder alone, recoil reduction, and a higher calibre barrel - stolen from an Atlas Glorious Massacre – loaded with a twenty round extended clip. His other weapons were a Bloody Revolver – Jakob's work, and a Combustion Hellfire decked out with recoil reduction, fire rate increase, and a firestorm of bullets in each clip.

He swept the small cavern and shifted his way out of the pile, letting the green slime drip from his Shock Nova shield. He blinked and his modded HUD kicked in it's night-vision: three skags slept in the corner, pups. While he assumed mom and dad were either out hunting, or right behind him.

He turned around.

A gaping skag mouth lashed out a whip-like tongue at his head.

Wylie ducked and jammed his barrel down the demented dog's ugly mouth and fired, blowing a round clean through it's body and out the creatures other end.

Then he went flying.

His shield drained and bursted into an explosion of blue electricity as the Alpha skag hit him from the side, sending him into the cavern wall.

His training kicked in and He got to his feet, switching to his Hellfire, and hammering down the trigger. The Skag flamed as the Nova shocked it's body, it's limbs shaking off the charred skin as it burned away and blackened itself again. The skag burned into nothing after one whole clip of the Hellfire was put into it's dog-like torso.

Wylie reloaded and turned to see all three pups just waking up, a quick switch to his Revolver and he blew them all over the cavern wall in three shots.

That's why they called him 'Wylie' He never could stick to one weapon in a good fight. Always switching and swapping, never standing still, and never once did he fell the emotional attachment that some soldiers tend to feel towards their own weapons. Even here on Pandora he had seen mad bandits hug and hold their weapons as if they were real people. It never made sense to him – then again very little did on this backwards pit of a planet.

He moved from the skags den and crept his way towards an exit to the east, his HUD marking the destination with a neat little dot in the green-hued terrain.

He was somewhere in the Dahl Headlands, looking for an S&S dealer that was selling weapons behind the back of the local merchant of death – Marcus Kincaid. This dealer had sent the tip off along to Hyperion head brass, who supplied him weapons to sell from his many piece-of-sh#! vendors. The over priced machines never had any _good_ weaponry in them, only the bottom of the barrel. Yet Hyperion had sent Wylie in to silence the S&S dealer anyway, anything to keep their profits high.

The cavern had begun to lighten and he blinked off his night-vision. After an hour or two of side-stepping skags and piles, and more skags, and many more piles, Wylie came to the all too familiar bandit barricades made of sheet metal and old wood. But most importantly – they were using S&S Munitions guns. The bright yellow, over capacity, high fire and low recoil guns made even the most shitty bandit able fire enough bullets from the hip to hit something eventually. Even the little midgets had them – freaks of nature.

Wylie wondered if they were to put one of those freaky little shot-gunners on the cover of a guide book for Pandora's tourists – would it improve business? He had no idea, he only know that they were fun to shoot at.

So he picked the closest one off, in the next section of the cavern. His Battle Rifle cut through the shield and penetrated the little fuckers skull in one shot, leaving grey matter all over the ground for the crabworms to lick up. His next target was a bandit, Wylie put a round in his shoulder, spun him around, and then blew his head clean off.

The rest of the bandits saw him and opened fire, one psycho even doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire, running towards Wylie with a hatchet in his hand screaming for blood.

One shot from his Bloody revolver put the psycho on the ground for good.

This was Pandora. One bloody firefight after another for paychecks that somehow seemed less worth it each time Wylie had to clean the blood off his boots with less and less water, and more spit each time.

A big badass bandit came into view as Wylie turned a rocky corner A thick helmet on his head and an bulletproof vest on his chest he was almost invulnerable.

Wylie switched to his hellfire and broke cover, squeezing the trigger in short bursts at the badass, who nearly exploded into flames.

The giant S&S support machine gun in his hands never got a chance to fire as the bandit melted down to the bones with each shot the hellfire spit from it's muzzle, as if the devil himself had been pulling the trigger.

Wylie reloaded both his Rifle and Hellfire as he walked through the badass ashes, then he noticed something hiding underneath a tarp beside a bandit he had blown in half. It was a chest, that he was guessing, that very bandit was trying to hide from him.

Wylie pressed the open key the red chest popped it's lid back, unfolding two platforms to right and to the left – holding ammunition and grenades while the main platform moved up and came to rest almost level with the other two. Ammunition was something he didn't need, his mods made sure of that, but the weapon sitting on the platform in front of his face was something he did care about. An Atlas combat shotgun with, what looked like, rockets in the chamber., and the blue glow of a shock elemental core.

He hefted the gun and smirked, "Holy crap, it shoots rockets!"

With his new gun loaded into his backpack's storage he quickly made his way through the camp, dispatching anything that pointed a gun, claw, or set of teeth at him.

Another hour of his life he wouldn't get back, another hour of his life spent on this damned rock.

Finally he came to it, the source of his problems. Hidden close to the end of the cavern Wylie walked up to, what looked like, old buildings that had been abandoned at some point, then re-purposed. S&S Munitions crates were strewn about outside the makeshift building, but no gun laid in the crates. He saw torches lit as they made there way up to the building's door, with a giant Skag skull hanging above it.

Wylie kicked it open.

A quick look at the building told him volumes. A giant bungalow lined with trophy's of all of Pandora's native wildlife. Skag heads, spiderant heads, bandit heads, midget heads, crabworm heads, there was even a couple Rakk heads near the far end – where the throne sat.

A giant chair made completely of bone, with a man he had never seen before in the chair.

"So you're the one who's been killing my men." The man in the throne stood, a large black cloak wrapped around his body obscured his physique from Wylie's view but his face told him a few things. A bald head was covered by a black bandanna, which was in turn held on by the straps of glowing green 'bug eye' goggles that hunters were famous for using as they stalked their prey in the low twilight of dusk.

"I'm just following your guns." Wylie thought he recognized something in his voice.

"Ah. So it is the Wylie one then isn't it?" his voice was deep and metallic

Wylie tilted his head to the side, "You know me?"

The man shook his head, "I'm surprised you don't know me." he clutched his cloak and threw it off. Crimson Lance armor layered his upper torso, but his lower body was something else. Mechanical struts broke apart and spread out to eight spider-like legs that supported the man, in his hands were two S&S repeater pistols, the high end kind. He removed his goggles and grinned

Wylie smiled and nodded, he did know this man. "switched companies have we Trent?"

"Yes we have, since that damned Vault fiasco two years ago the Atlas corporation lost it's support – and rights – to Pandora." His legs twitched in between sentences, "Without that support they had to make cuts to security and equipment for their arms shipments." His black lips frowned as his crooked nose shook in the air, connecting to his one good eye, a dark blue, and his other cybernetic red one.

"And something tells me a pirate raid on one of those shipment took your legs off."

"Exactly. I was saved by an S&S patrol and I've been working for them ever since. They even gave me these new legs to boot."

"Well it's just to bad, but I'm going to have to break them Trent."

"You're seriously gonna try and kill me?"

"I've gotta Trent. My Mission is to take out the S&S arms dealer, an you're it. Besides, my contract is for thirty missions, and you'll make number twenty-one."

"But you'll never leave Hyperion, we both know that!" Trent aimed his pistols

"No, they treat me good enough, but I can leave this damned world once I re-negotiate!" Wylie pulled out his new shot-gun and aimed directly beneath Trent, fingering the trigger as he lined up his shot.

"Don't make me do this Wylie."

"Why not?"

Trent lowered his pistols, "Because friends on this world are few and far between."

"No deal, if I willingly walk away my contract is voided and I'm stuck here."

Trent thought for a moment, a long moment, then, his dark lips slithered into a smile.

"What are you plotting?" Wylie lowered his Terrible Carnage a little.

"You have an outstanding mission to recover any manner of alien technology you find, the same as I do, correct?"

Wylie nodded, "I've found fuck-all though."

"What if you did find something? I'm sure Hyperion would...understand if you had to let me escape in order to obtain that valuable technology."

"Only if I actually found some." Wylie lowered his gun completely, "Why?"

Trent leaned in, his legs humming as they shifted on the steel floor to support his upper torso's new location – a few breaths away from Wylie's own pale face, "I have a map."

"A map?"

"Yes, a map detailing the location of a theoretical treasure trove Eridian technologies that far surpass our own primitive devices."

"Who told you this?"

"A respected scientist and an expert in Eridian technology."

"It wasn't that Dahl corporation cast-away Tannis was it?"

Trent cocked his head slightly to the left, making his nose look almost straight, "How'd you know?"

"Scientist isn't exactly a popular profession around here, did she happen to give you the map or do I have top go hunting for it too?"

"I happen to have it!" Trent grinned and almost ran to the back of the room, opening what looked like a chest behind his throne, "Ah-ha! Got it!"

He sounded almost like an annoying Claptrap.

Trent ran back over and handed the map to Wylie, who took it in his hands. The paper was not paper at all, but fabric. A blue velvet to be exact, with the map being drawn on the back of a cup, which was connected to another the same size, and a strap connecting both of them together.

A bra.

On the first cup was the map, on the second was a note.

"Dear reader, if you are indeed reading this, then please do not tell the voice recorder about me loosing this. It's always trying to run my life. Please return Mr. Bra to Patricia Tannis on Rust Commons West, Tannis Street, shack 1.

-P.S. You'll have to knock, a Skag at my mailbox

The map itself was almost unreadable, some circles, an X, a dotted line, a giant U, and something about tunnels scribbled at the bottom, with Trash Coast written beside it.

"You expect me to find the leftover remnants on an advanced civilization that disappeared only god knows how many years ago with this?"

"Yes." Trent nodded

"I can't even read this damned thing!"

"What's not to read? It's the Trash Coast, and the big U in the New-U station. You can fast-track it there with that Hyperion Pass of yours."

"No, I can't. My DNA is too screwed from my time on Prometheus – before Atlas took it over remember?"

"Right, the radiation."

Wylie nodded, "that is right, I have to drive there."

"Why not take a bus?"

Wylie looked Trent in his one good eye, "Do you have any idea what kind of psycho's ride on a bus?"


End file.
